


forever is our today

by Cheshire



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Blood, Crimson Flower, Depression, Implications of suicide, M/M, Post-Game, Prompt: Reunion, References to Sex, Sylvixweek2019, Worst Timeline, bad timeline, im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 14:40:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21017435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheshire/pseuds/Cheshire
Summary: Twenty-three years after the war, Felix and Sylvain find each other one last time.





	forever is our today

Twenty-three years had passed since Sylvain last saw Felix, and twenty-three years since Fhirdiad burned like some sick pantomime of the eternal flames.

Margrave Gautier had fulfilled all his duties and continued to fulfill them. He would until the day he died. With what energy he had left after he was done being the Margrave, Sylvain simply lived, day in and day out, numb.

He wasn't sure what he felt to see Felix again, standing before him once more. It'd been so long since he last felt anything at all.

The worst of it was that Felix still looked so young, older than before, but he was the picture of a man that had just left his youth to enter his prime. Sylvain's own minor crest had let him bear the weight of twenty odd years with grace, as handsome as ever--or moreso, depending on who you asked. Felix's major crest was a different matter entirely.

Felix looked like he had a century left or more, and Sylvain would have half that, if even. It was a reminder that their lives were never meant to be shared.

"I thought I'd never see you again," Sylvain said. His voice ran cold like his father's, and bitter like his brother's. There was something of an accusation buried in there.

"I never intended to come back." Felix's face twisted into something caught between a smile and a smirk, with just a smidgen of--of what? Sylvain didn't know. Bloodlust? Loathing? Something that had already seen shadows of twenty-three years ago, something that a better friend might have acknowledged rather than ignored. "Congratulations, Margrave. You've all built peace in Fódlan, and the only work I've got left is on the borders."

"Here for business then?" If so, Felix need never have seen Sylvain in person. The border guard could hire mercenaries whenever they required them, which was all the time. "And here I was hoping you might've come this far for pleasure."

That won him a venomous glare, but maybe that was only fair. After all, it'd been not just years but decades. It was brazen to assume anything left between the two of them was the same--

Felix grabbed him by the neck--why not seize his _collar_, so maybe Sylvain could _breathe_\--and kissed him. His mouth was warm, his tongue white-hot and searching. Sylvain's heart raced, his pulse pounding a fierce staccato against the pale hand on his jugular.

For one precious moment, Sylvain felt nineteen-years-old again, foolishly young and foolishly in love, like the world was theirs for the taking.

When they parted, Sylvain breathed in at last, a sorely needed breath, but the air was cold and terrible. It burned in a way that not breathing hadn't.

There was no affection in how Felix looked at him, though there remained a hunger, an insatiable longing. It was a look that Sylvain should've found unsettling instead of comforting.

"Pleasure can wait, Margrave. Shut up and find me someone to kill."

-

Sylvain found Felix someone to kill. He found many someones, practically a whole clan of Sreng fighters that should have been fearsome, but instead the Meandering Sword taught them a lesson in fear.

Most mercenaries were methodical, armed with skill in one hand, caution in the other. Felix was no such mercenary. He must've had a deathwish with the way he fought, without a single concern to whether he lived or died. Unfortunately for him, no opponent had the strength to cut him down.

It was only the two of them against the warlord’s clan, though it could've been only one, either him of Felix alone would’ve sufficed. Sylvain ventured out alone often enough, and a few bouts against the Lance of Ruin was enough for Sreng's wiser leaders to retreat at the sight of him.

This time though, Sylvain only watched as Felix washed the border in blood. Bodies fell to the ground, sliced apart by either his crest or his masterwork swords.

None of them survived. Felix didn't allow it. It wasn't strange for a mercenary to uniquely go for the kill--a dead enemy was the only safe enemy--but this was systematic. It was a ruthless efficiency that would've been machine-like if not for the obvious bloodlust.

"That's enough," Sylvain said, standing between Felix and the last remaining enemies that were fast fleeing the area. "They're retreating. There's no reason to continue fighting, Felix."

Anger flashed in his eyes. "There's _always_ reason to continue fighting, Margrave."

Sylvain crossed the distance between them. Felix had a second, when Sylvain's hand traced Felix's jaw and tilted his face up, and he didn't protest. Instead, he stared at Sylvain wide-eyed like a captured animal.

Sylvain kissed him--gently, kindly, handling Felix as he might handle something fragile and broken but precious nonetheless.

"That's enough," he said again, and this time Felix gave in, somehow lost and confused at the simple notion that there should be an end to bloodshed. "You can rest now."

-

The first night Felix stayed with him, he had left his own guest bedroom and broke into Sylvain's. Sylvain had barely just asked if Felix needed anything before Felix was upon him. The rest was a blur. All he remembered was Felix's hands around his cock, then his mouth, and then he was led to his own bed like a stud horse to stable.

The second night, Sylvain wasn't surprised to see Felix in his room again, though he'd been scarce all day. He caught Felix by the hands when he approached. Felix allowed him to bind him to the bedposts, and Sylvain spent the night loving him in every way he knew how.

In the end, Sylvain carried a spent Felix to the baths, where he's allowed to wash him clean, and then back to bed, laying him down over clean sheets.

Felix rested his head on Sylvain's chest, content but otherwise unreadable. He said, "Crest-bearing blood would slow your aging, Margrave."

"No, Felix," Sylvain replied, before the offer was even made. "My life's already gone on long enough."

"Why not?" He'd sound angrier if he weren't so tired, Sylvain knew. "You're going to die."

Sylvain laughed, a heavier sound than in his youth, weighed down by the burden of years. "We're all going to die," he replied, with no small amount of fondness.

"But you'll die before me." Felix sat up to look down at him, straddling him at the waist, and Sylvain knew what he was going to say next. He knew, and it hurt anyway. "You promised--we'd go together, you promised."

"I was young, and that was before _you_ left me." He wasn't angry. He was once, then anger turned to despair, and then to nothing at all. "I would still die for you, Felix, but I won't live for you. Not anymore."

That wounded him. Belatedly, Sylvain realized that Felix still had a heart, though Sylvain might have broken what little remained of it. Well, hearts weren't made to last anyway.

He expected fury, but Felix leaned down and kissed him, the first thing he'd done to Sylvain that was kind, a touch so soft that it barely felt real.

"Please," Felix asked, so close that his lips brushed against Sylvain's as he spoke.

"No," he repeated. "I'm tired of gravekeeping. Why would I want to spend even more decades alone? I can't do it, Felix. I won't."

There were years upon years when Sylvain would have done anything Felix asked of him, years when he could've found joy just from seeing him again. There were years where his world still had color, but those days were long since past.

Twenty-three years was too late.

-

Felix stayed for the entirety of the short war against Sreng, where the fighting was fierce through the summer and dwindling to an end in the fall. Each day, Sylvain was surprised to see him alongside him in the flesh, not a figment of his imagination. Eventually, Felix stopped feeling like a dream and began to feel like reality.

Felix spent his days out at the border, a scourge against his enemies, but he always returned not long after sundown. Sylvain learned to expect to wake up with Felix curled up against him and to sleep only after Felix had been sated. They spent their evenings conversing over tea and board games, where Felix humored Sylvain’s interests as he had when he was a boy. They spent their nights fucking because Sylvain doubted Felix actually wanted anything more from him than that.

A quick war should’ve been a blessing for Fódlan, but Sylvain found himself wishing that this one might last forever. It wasn’t meant to be, not with the number of corpses Felix piled up as if war were but a children’s game, and certainly not with winter on its way.

He thought Felix was already asleep against his shoulder. Felix hadn’t spoken for hours, and Sylvain had busied himself reading by soft candlelight. Out of the blue, Felix reached up to him, a hand to cup Sylvain’s face, to draw his gaze down.

"What if I stayed?" Felix offered. "Then would you take my blood?"

"What?" His heart skipped a beat. Sylvain wasn't sure he'd heard correctly. Maybe he'd only heard what he wanted to hear.

"I could stay here with you. You'll need mercenaries for at least another generation. I may as well stay."

"You hate it here," Sylvain stated.

"I don't hate--" Yes, he did. He wouldn't have left to begin with if he could still tolerate Faerghus and everything it stood for. Felix tried again, this time with the truth, "I like _you_, Margrave. Isn't that enough?"

Would it be enough? _Could_ he be enough?

"Sylvain, _please_.” Felix’s voice wavered, and Sylvain’s will did too. “Let me save someone for once in my life."

In the end, Sylvain said yes. Of course he said yes.

That night, Felix nearly bled out in Sylvain’s arms. Sylvain could only wonder if that had been his intent all along, to sink into unconsciousness and never wake again while Sylvain drank from his neck.

If it was, Sylvain denied him his death, bandaging his wounds and applying a touch of white magic. It was the first time since he’d arrived that Sylvain had seen Felix wholly at peace, at rest. He wondered if he should’ve let him go, but Sylvain didn’t want to live in a world without Felix either.

-

The next morning, Sylvain woke up and his bed was cold.

Felix was gone, and whatever sense Sylvain had went with him.

His guards came running, first at the noise--the unbridled rage they’d never heard from their lord--and then for the obvious destruction as Sylvain left his room in shambles. If it could break, he broke it. If it couldn’t, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

“Find him,” he snarled--the Margave snarled, those were orders. “_Find him_, and bring him back to me.”

It wasn’t too late. How far could Felix have gone? Not out of Gautier territory yet, surely. He could gather up guards, his knights, his soldiers, send out a strike force to cover all the dukedom if need be. He was Margrave Gautier, and Faerghus bent to his whims. He could make it happen. Surely he could.

He should never have given Felix free reign of the keep. He should’ve had guards on him, placed him somewhere under lock and key--Goddess, why had he even let Felix throw himself at Sreng day after day--he should've put him somewhere he couldn’t have escaped so easily. He held castles and keeps, any one of them would do. He could build a cage wrought out of splendor.

_Next time_\--the Margrave made plans for next time, though he knew there wouldn’t be one.

He sank to the floor, kneeling with nothing but emptiness in his heart and the taste of blood upon his lips.


End file.
